The Iberville public housing development, with a maroon tinge, as photographed in August 2010

Source: David Grunfeld, The Times-Picayune

Author:

Philip Langdon

New Urban Network

An unusually comprehensive federal initiative will try to make drastic improvements in poor, violence-prone neighborhoods in Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago.

The US Department of Housing & Urban Development chose projects in the five cities as recipients of a total of $122 million in Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grants, the first major awards in this Obama Administation initiative.

The grants are intended to redevelop distressed housing and at the same time bring about far-reaching neighorhood revitalization in blighted areas where violence is common, poverty is high, and school performance is substandard.

The recipient organizations, targeted neighborhoods, and the amount of the awards are:

• City of Boston/Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corp., $20.5 million, for Woodledge/Morrant Bay Apartments and Dorchester/Quincy Corridor community. The city's Quincy Corridor Transformation plan centers on a "severely distressed" 129-unit HUD-assisted housing development in a part of the city where violent crime is twice as prevalent as in the city as a whole.

• Housing Authority of NewOrleans/City of New Orleans,$30.5 million, for Iberville Public Housing Development/Iberville-Treme community.

• McCormack Baron Salazar/San Francisco Housing Authority, $30.5 million, for Alice Griffith Public Housing Development/Eastern Bayview community. The core of this undertaking is a 22-acre, 256-unit public housing development built in 1962. The goal is to produce a total of 1,126 uinits—a mix of public housing, low-income housing tax-credit units, market-rate, "inclusionary," and workforce units. "As part of a longer term plan, up to 7,850 units are projected to be developed over the next 10-15 years," HUD said.

• Housing Authority of the City of Seattle, $10.27 million, for Yesler Terrace Public Housing Development/Yesler community. A 15-year plan is aimed at transforming the Yesler neighborhood, adjacent to Seattle's business district, through "investmentof approximately $2 billion in public and private funds," according to HUD.

Conditions in all of these neighborhoods are difficult. But most of the targeted areas are near areas that are considerably more prosperous, which could help them recover. The Iberville public housing project, for example, "is adjacent to the thriving French Quarter and Central Business District," HUD pointed out in one of a series of project summaraies available on the HUD website.

The Iberville/Treme Transformation Plan is extremely ambitious, as are the four other initial projects in the HUD program. The Iberville plan focuses on a distressed 821-unit public housing complex in a neighborhood where more than 52 percent of the households live in poverty. Only 441 of its units are currently occupied. Iberville was designed in 1940 as a superblock of 74 two- and three-story buildings. Twenty-four of those buildings will be reconfigures and renovated, HUD said, while the remaining 50 buildings will be replaced and the street grid will be restored.

When the changes are complete,there will be 913 units on-site,of which 304 will be public housing available to current Iberville residents. The remaining 609 on-site units will be split evenly between market-rate and low-income housing tax credit units. An additional 1,518 rental units will be created within the neighborhood; 527 of those will be public housing or project-based Section 8 uits. An additional 15 sites will be developed into homeownership units. The total costs are estimated at approximately $662 million.

Improving public education and getting families on a track toward better lives are two of the goals that the program will try to achieve in addition to providing higher-quality housing. The Workforce Investment Authority and Early Chldhood & Family Learning Foundation's Outreach Program will attempt to see that kindergarteners are reading at grade-level expectations. The Recovery School District and its partners will build or renovate schools and work with the Afterschool Partnership and the Boys and Girls Club to provide enrichment activities before and after school. Allied with those efforts will behealth programs and a Police Department violence prevention program.

After extensive neighborhood planning, "the development team intends to leverage a $2 million Sustainable Communities Challenge Grant to study the removal of an elevated stretch of interstate I-10, the return of a new streetcar line (named Desire), and further City investment in the Lafitte Greenway," HUD noted. Other elements of the program include street connectivity enhancements, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, and spaces for neighborhood retail in the ground floor of new residential buildings.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the project "could drastically change a large portion of the city's downtown." Said the paper: With hopes of transforming an entire neighborhood, developers will spend $589 million in the "Iberville-Treme" area to construct nearly 2,446 new apartments, many above ground-floor stores and cafes."

Progress seems to be rapid already, judging from the Times-Picayune:

Construction is underway in the historic 18-story Texaco Building at 1501 Canal St., which will include 114 senior-citizen apartments and ground-floor retail. And a group of developers filed applications today with the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, requesting low-income housing tax credits for three segments of the plan. Nonprofit developer Artspace filed an application for its plan to create art lofts within the historic Andrew J. Bell school in the 6th Ward. And Iberville site developers McCormack Baron Salazar and HRI Properties requested tax credits for one section of the Iberville complex and for Israel Augustine School on South Broad Street, which will be renovated into apartments.

In the other cities as well, a variety of organizations have agreed to tackle the many troubles of the target neighbboods. Chad Perry at Goody Clancy & Associates, which has been involved in planning in New Orleans, sees Choice Neighborhods as similar to HUD's longstanding HOPE VI program, which focuses on deteriorated public housing projects.

"I think the main difference with Choice Neighborhoods ... is that it looks more deliberately at the larger surrounding area and linkages to public services to transform distressed neighborhoods and projects into sustainable mixed-income communities," says Perry.

Tampa, Florida, had also been in the running for a Choice Neighborhoods grant, but did not get it. A HUD spokeswoman said that "unfortunately, we did not have enough funding to award a grant to all of the finalists after partially funding the fifth application—Seattle."

"Congress appropriated $65 million for the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative in both 2010 and 2011," the spokeswoman said. "In order to fund more applicants for the first Choice Neighborhood Implementation grants, HUD decided to combine 2010 and 2011 funding to award five of the six Choice Implementation finalists and included this option in the Round 2 NOFA [Notice of Funding Availability] that was published in March."